


Potential

by alocalband



Series: TW Tumblr Ficlets [5]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-23 19:32:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9672926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alocalband/pseuds/alocalband
Summary: Stiles finds him in a bookstore in Brooklyn and it’s like not a day has passed since they last saw each other, even though it’s been almost two years now.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [Also on Tumblr.](http://alocalband.tumblr.com/post/135942457180/happy-holidays-its-a-little-late-but-i-hope-you)

Stiles finds him in a bookstore in Brooklyn, and it’s like not a day has passed since they last saw each other, even though it’s been almost two years now.

Stiles is riding the high of just having finished up his first semester of college, and has been wandering the unseasonably warm city trying to kill the couple days he’s got before his flight back home for Christmas. The last thing he expected to find inside this hole-in-the-wall place with a chalkboard sign at its entrance proclaiming that the “Soup of the Day” is “Walden Pond,” was Derek Hale.

Derek is folded into a high-backed armchair, hidden amongst the stacks, so completely absorbed in the book he’s reading that he doesn’t notice Stiles at first. Something by Roberto Bolano in its original Spanish. The showoff.

He’s dressed in a soft sweater and rumpled jeans, his hair a little longer than Stiles remembers it. His fingers linger over the page as he turns it, and then absently reach up to scratch against the grain of the stubble along his jaw before settling again in his lap, and Stiles swallows so hard he nearly chokes.

For a very long time, Stiles just stands there with a Chernow biography hanging limply in one hand, frozen and uncertain how to react.

“Guess I owe Scott a twenty,” he finally says, with more bravado than he feels.

Derek’s head jerks up and his eyes hone in on Stiles with a sharpness generally reserved for predators. Or for former victims who don’t want to end up as such ever again.

Stiles clears his throat and pretends he doesn’t know all too well now which one of those Derek really is. “You know, seeing as I was absolutely certain you’d found somewhere to go hide that was as far from modern civilization as possible.”

Derek offers a small smirk, his shoulders relaxing minutely at the invitation for banter. Two years of distance and silence between them and they can fall into it as easily as they ever did. “Scott bet in favor of me living in the city?”

“In favor of you suddenly becoming a contributing member of society. Scott has this weird idea that you’re more well-adjusted now. Normal, even. Like he’d even know what that looks like anymore, I mean come on.”

“Do _you_?”

“I–” Stiles starts and stops; then scowls. “Yeah, alright. Touché, dude. So how ya been?”

“Well, I haven’t gotten impaled by anything in over a year, so that’s been nice.”

“Hey, same! I mean, things were a little dicey there right after you left, but they mostly settled down senior year. I survived long enough to leave, at any rate.”

“You go to school here?”

“Yep, Columbia.”

“Good for you.” Derek stands and steps forward, placing a hand on Stiles’ shoulder and squeezing. “I’m happy for you, Stiles.”

Stiles swallows and blinks back what are definitely not tears and what is definitely not an emotion he’s been training himself for years now to pretend doesn’t exist. “Thanks, man. You too.”

“My number hasn’t changed, by the way.”

“Oh. Yeah, mine hasn’t either.”

“If you need anything… I’m around, alright?”

Stiles nods, but doesn’t trust himself to say anything out loud in response to that. It feels like a huge offer, a bridge across whatever divide Stiles thought was ever between them, and yet it also feels so _easy_.

He offers Derek a salute as they part ways. Derek gives him a small smirk and a nod.

Stiles manages to keep from texting Scott about it until he’s back home, though it’s a near thing. The brief encounter occupies his waking thoughts a lot more than he knows how to justify. That is, until two days later when he has more pressing concerns to preoccupy himself with.

It’s the warmest winter on record this year, and of course it starts snowing like nobody’s business the day of Stiles’ flight. Stiles doesn’t bother going to the airport that night, the news already informing him that all planes are grounded for the foreseeable future.

He can only imagine the mayhem that tomorrow will bring. Christmas Eve and a few thousand people trying to get new flights out. He wonders if it’ll be worth it to even make an attempt, or if he should just hunker down in his now empty apartment and ring in the holiday with leftover pizza and his roommate’s cheap beer.

His dad tells him he’s already picked up extra shifts at the station so that a couple more of his deputies can go home to their families, so not to worry about it. Which doesn’t actually make Stiles feel any better, but he fakes it while on the phone.

The radiator goes in and out all night, not up to the strain of its first prolonged use since last winter. The internet stops working in the early hours of the morning, and the only food besides cold pizza in the place is Ramen.

By the time the sun is setting on Christmas Eve, Stiles is irritable and cold and _bored_.

And then he gets a text message. From Derek. Who, even now, apparently will always have a sixth sense about when Stiles is in need of rescuing.

_Merry Christmas_ it says, without any punctuation to help Stiles figure out the tone.

Still. Derek texted him. That’s… that’s something.

Stiles texts right back, before he can think better of it. _Hey. You busy?_

It’s a full ten minutes later before he gets a reply. _Why?_

Good old Derek. The only person Stiles has ever met who’s at least as paranoid as he is.

_My flight home got canceled. First Christmas by myself since I was ten. Figured some company was in order._

_You were alone on Christmas when you were ten?_

Stiles snorts. _That really the direction you want to take this convo? My sob stories ain’t got nothing on yours, but they still suck._

He gets back an address followed by a: _Come by whenever. There’s a Twilight Zone marathon on and my neighbor made me a casserole that doesn’t smell like it’s been poisoned._

_I hate casserole,_ Stiles texts back, but then bundles up and heads for the nearest subway entrance.

It’s less of a traditional casserole and more of a mac and cheese bake that Stiles is very glad his father has never known the existence of because a single helping would probably kill the man.

“Your neighbors must really like you,” Stiles says around chewing as he happily stuffs his face.

Derek sits back in the armchair beside the couch Stiles claimed and shrugs a shoulder stiffly. “Melody is convinced that the way to a man’s heart is through cholesterol build up.”

“She may be onto something. I’d totally put out for this.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “I’ll let her know. Maybe she’ll finally take the hint and start doting over you instead.”

Stiles refuses to comment or think too hard about how tight Derek’s jaw is as he speaks about it. Doesn’t want to have to imagine Derek’s forced politeness in response to persistent, unwanted attention. It makes him feel a little gross and a little sad and a lot uncomfortable.

He finishes the rest of his food in relative silence, Derek sipping from a steaming mug of coffee, a black and white Rod Serling talking calmly at them from the television set in the corner.

The apartment is smaller and more cluttered than Stiles expected, given both Derek’s net worth and his proclivity for Spartan living. It looks, dare Stiles even think it, but almost _cozy_. A window seat overflowing with pillows, afghans draped over the backs and the arms of every chair, a couple of book shelves whose contents seem to have started migrating away to form stacks of paperbacks in random spots on the hard wood floor. There’s an herb garden in a flowerbox above the kitchen sink. There’s a framed Rothko print above the unmade bed.

“How long have you been in New York?” Stiles asks once he’s cleared his plate away and now holds his own mug tightly in both hands. The phantom cold of the snow outside and of his chilly apartment seems to cling to his skin even here.

“About a year,” Derek answers easily, though he keeps his eyes on the TV. “It took some time to work myself up to it.”

“Well, we missed you, man.”

Derek finally turns to look at Stiles and raises a single, infinitely judgmental and sarcastic eyebrow in response.

“Oh shut up, we did. You know, in our way. We… I… Whatever. Forget it.” Stiles shifts in his seat, feeling suddenly, painfully exposed. Like he’s just admitted to something he didn’t even know about himself. Had he missed Derek? And if so, how _much_ did he miss Derek? And why is he only just now realizing he did?

Derek says nothing. He gets up to take his empty mug to the kitchen, grabbing Stiles’ from him as well on the way. When he returns, he doesn’t sit back down in his armchair, but beside Stiles on the couch, so close they’re nearly touching. He looks at Stiles evenly, his multicolored eyes intense enough that Stiles can’t look away from them once his gaze is caught.

“I had to leave.”

“What? Dude, you don’t need to explain yourself to me. I get it. You–”

“Stiles,” Derek interrupts firmly. “ _I had to leave._ But… That doesn’t mean there weren’t things I would’ve stayed for, if I could have.”

Stiles swallows thickly and licks his lips. Derek is a steady and comforting warmth along his side and he wants so badly to fall into it entirely, wrap himself up in it. “Yeah? Like what?”

“Like… potential.”

Stiles bites back a small grin. He thought it would be scary to have it voiced out loud like that, to have acknowledged what he only dared let himself think about on late, sleepless nights. This feeling of possibility between him and Derek. This tension that they always played off as antagonistic but which even at the start felt like something else underneath that Stiles could never find the words for.

He always thought having it acknowledged, by anyone, but especially by Derek himself, would feel terrifying, or overwhelming. Instead, it feels like a relief. Like letting out a held breath. Like _finally._

“A lot can change in two years,” Stiles says, because even at his most content and safe feeling, his self-preservation instinct when it comes to his emotions is still in full force. He doesn’t form attachments often or easily, and it’s precisely because when he does it tends to _hurt_. “You don’t think that potential’s changed too?”

Derek studies his face carefully for a moment. “I think I might be willing to find out.”

The kiss seems to happen of its own, gentle accord, rather than being initiated by either of them. Just a soft brush of lips, Derek drawing the tip of his nose across Stiles’ cheek and then kissing him again, chaste and tentative and unlike anything Stiles ever imagined this could be like.

Some part of him deep in his chest is trembling as they pull apart, and his breath is a shallow, shaky whisper.

“Not exactly how I expected to spend my first Christmas away from home,” he chuckles slightly and leans in further as Derek shifts his weight. He feels Derek’s arm wrap around his middle and help pull him in until they’re practically in each other’s laps, legs tangled haphazardly.

Derek smiles at him, almost a smirk but softer and definitely affectionate. That is totally affection in Derek Hale’s eyes and it is directed in its glorious entirety at Stiles Stilinski.

“But it’s okay?” he asks, as if there were any doubt.

Stiles grins and blushes and buries his face in Derek’s shoulder to hide it. He’s pretty sure Derek can smell the happiness on him anyway, the sense of comfort and security mixed with the kind of hope and anticipation he hasn’t felt in a very long time. “Best Christmas ever,” he says in a mocking, pseudo-serious tone of voice, but even he can hear the sincerity beneath that he can’t quite cover.

Derek shakes his head, and huffs a quiet laugh into Stiles’ hair. “Best Christmas ever,” he repeats on a sigh, and Stiles pulls him a little closer.


End file.
